The United Arab Emirates’ rail company has ordered seven locomotives for delivery by 2012 from Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), a unit of Caterpillar Inc , the UAE firm said on Sunday.

State-owned Etihad Rail plans to complete UAE’s 40 billion dirham ($10.9 billion) rail project in the next seven to eight years, and later link it to other regional lines in the Gulf Arab region.

Etihad Rail, 70 percent owned by Abu Dhabi’s government and 30 percent by the UAE federal government, plans to develop a 266-km (166 mile) route for trains transporting up to 22,000 tonnes of granulated sulphur daily from sources in Shah and Habshan for export abroad at the port of Ruwais, the firm said.

Etihad Rail gave no value for the order.

The route marks the first phase of a 1,200 km freight and passenger network that will span the seven emirates, and ultimately connect the UAE to neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The six Gulf Arab states plan to spend more than $100 billion on a rail project linking them up by 2017, with long-range plans to extend the high-speed network as far as Yemen in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. (Reporting by Martina Fuchs)